NAZI SALUTE
Published by deviousdiva February 21st, 2006 in Personal.A nazi salute at the Popular Orthodox Rally (Laos) party conference. This comes as no surprise to me, even as Giorgos Karatzaferis was distancing himself from the incident. The British National Party (BNP) in Britain has also attempted to clean up their act to lure more supporters. Make no mistake though, they still hold their extreme right-wing views even though they dress in suits now rather than nazi regalia. Giorgos Karatzaferis and his Laos party are still ultra-nationalistic, anti-semitic and racist but they are gaining ground by pretending they are something they are not. Respectable.
From Searchlight (2004)
The widespread acceptance of these ideas was illustrated by the results for Giorgos Karatzaferis’ right-wing extremist LAOS party, which expresses similar ideas but has not been labelled as a nazi party. LAOS received 252,429 votes (4.12%) and its leader won a seat in the European Parliament as a member of the Independent Democrats group.
Karatzaferis does not want to be called a far-right leader but has a long history of cooperation with the nazis. In 1998, as an opposition New Democracy (ND) member of parliament, he called on members of Golden Dawn to join forces with ND and promised them the secretariat of a ministry in a future government. When the Greek Prime Mimister and ND leader, Kostas Karamanlis, was asked by journalists to comment on this by one of his MPs, he merely answered that “on historical issues there are different approaches”.
In 2001, having formed his own party, Karatzaferis made a speech in parliament claiming that there was a Jewish conspiracy behind the September 11th terrorist attacks. A Greek Communist Party MP, Giorgos Hourmouziadis publicly supported these comments.
In 2002, Karatzaferis included four nazis in his election list for the prefecture elections. Protests by the Antinazi Initiative wrecked the cooperation between LAOS and the nazis but LAOS still received 14% of the vote.
In the 2004 European election, LAOS included the notorious national socialist, Konstantinos Plevris, on its candidates’ list. Plevris is founder of a party called The Fourth of August (the anniversary date of the Metaxas dictatorship established in 1936) and was a councillor in the 1967-74 military junta.
He has also written a book about Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels’ diary in which he claims that Hitler’s troops “admired the Greeks” and that it was the English forces sent to Greece that caused the German invasion in 1941. In another book Let’s talk about Jews, he denies the Holocaust and the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.
The main ingredients of LAOS’ propaganda are antisemitism, xenophobia, nationalism and ranting against globalisation, the “New World Order”, the “Europe of the capitalists” and the so-called “global domination of Zionism”. These distasteful ideas are disseminated in the party’s weekly newspaper A1 and by its TV channel Tele-Asty which transmits all over Greece.
Miss Diva,
It’s unfortunate that groups such as these persist today. It’s all good people such as yourself can get the word out on these rascals.
Many of my colleagues agree that until the scourge of racism is wiped from the map, that the world will continue to be a dangerous place.
God Bless you for your wonderful blog and the good work you do in Greece.
Welcome to my blog, Shemp and thank you for the lovely words. I hope you will visit again. Yes indeed. I agree with you completely about racism. It saddens me everyday that it just seems to be getting worse rather than better.
zardoz says:
many people read your blog ms DD and others,
on my terminal today ,
i mentioned the above article,
and others at times ,
ive showed it to at least 18 persons,
there is a lot of hype of todays politics
that hide in the shadows
and ther not the only ones.
some did mention to me that name SHEMP
is a name of one of the three stooges
that replaced the character of MOE,
the others LARRY and CURLY ,
sound and write very familiar.
seems like the three stooges
and replacements,
HAVE BEFRENDED YOU.
nice to have new acquaintances all the time, isnt it?
=== zardoz ===
Thank you zardoz and yes, it is nice to have new people around.
I am pretty certain we will be hearing more from the extreme right in the near future. I just hope there is no way he can win the post of mayor of Thessaloniki? What does anyone reckon his chances are?
Karatzaferis persists even occasionally. If you go to the kiosks today and buy his Alpha1 weekly you will read about the de-Hellenization of Greek police as they replaced the Byzantrine cross with the David star in their hats - so claims LAOS.
But after he was kciked out of a moderate right group in 2004 in Europe he said in a congress that we should be now careful of how we say things, not what we think. This is what he does, and Greek society notorious for tolerating not diversity but intolerance buys it.
some related reading on what Greece tolerates in their highways and other public places
Greece: ‘Jews whores gallows are coming’ – ‘Out with foreigners’
Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM)
3 November 2005
http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/ind.....p;cid=1305
Greece: GHM comments to BBC on neo-Nazi gathering for Greek fest
Greek Helsinki Monitor
16 September 2005
http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/ind.....p;cid=1147
zardoz says :
dear ms DD
the problem of who will win thessalonikis mayors office is solved
todays mayor seems to be doing just fine with ample time to win
with ample majority . so me no worry there.
THE MAJOR PROBLEM IS :
that LAOS is going to concentrate in the greater thessaloniki
all of its mobile forces and try to pull-in more followers thus broadening
and cementing its popular base.
His making a move for the future and its quite smart on his part
to broaden his party with more followers, by talking , on local problems
and maybe solving one or two ,
Historically in germany 1933-36 this is how the brown shirts
made their social base , and i believe we will see a rise in LAOS base
followers , both in greek populace and yugoslav makedonian populace
then of course the scenario of a MAKEDONIA with thessaloniki
its capital , is quite old and very fresh to gather people around a
NEW IDEA of seccesion because were not happy with athens.
SO THE SOLUTION IS
1)WHAT IS REALLY BEST FOR THESSALONICIANS AND HOW
ARE THEY GOING TO ADDRESS THEIR FUTURE.?
REALLY CANT SAY , ITS AS DARK AS THESSALONIKIS HARBOR
== Z ==
Good morning zardoz,
You are absolutly right that the problem we are facing is that Karatzaferis is “making a move for the future and its quite smart on his part
to broaden his party with more followers, by talking , on local problems
and maybe solving one or two ”
The situation in the areas of Greece that are suffering from neglect from the mainstream parties is ripe for these extremists to gather support. If you can tap into peoples’s fears for their future, you are onto a winner. Worrying.
Welcome greekhelsinki and thank you for the information on Karatzaferis. I blogged many times about the Eurofest gathering (Hatewave as they called it) last year. The reaction against it was very encouraging and brings me hope that these people will not be able to get away with spreading their racist xenophobic bile so easily. If you want to, check back under the category “Neo-nazi” in the sidebar. The comment discussions were very interesting and provocative. Especially this one http://deviousdiva.wordpress.c...../sickened/
A new development is that there are now two judicial investigations of the neo-Nazi slogans opened, one in Kefalonia and one in Athens and we are testifying.
“Greece: GHM comments to BBC on neo-Nazi gathering for Greek fest
Greek Helsinki Monitor
16 September 2005″
Just a comment such rally’s occur regularly int he U.S.
The real strong neo Nazi movement is is Macedonia. I saw one in Skopje last year.
i am greek and i dislike karatzaferis.
he is not a trustable and stable person but i think you are wrong about the nazi salute.
what happened was: there was a crowd of thousants of people and one of them did a nazi salute. we cant blame karatzaferis for the action of his supporter.
lets blame him for other things such as dishonesty etc..
I certainly was not saying that Karatzaferis did the salute. Perhaps it wasn’t clear in my write-up.
Thanks for the comment. I hope you will visit me at mt new place: http://deviousdiva.com